


In Cold Nightmares

by Rainy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Evil Dream!Luke, F/M, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Nightmares, Sleepy Cuddles, a moment of respite before the next battle, force skype
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 20:56:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13509633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainy/pseuds/Rainy
Summary: The new base is cold.  Rey seeks out warmth, and sleep, but all her mind can show her is horrors.  Then the Force Bond comes to the rescue.One shot, Post Last Jedi.





	In Cold Nightmares

The first night in their new old base is quiet and cold. Though, maybe that is just to her. Her quarters were freezing. After Jakku, anything felt cold. She hadn't totally noticed it over the past few days through all of the adrenaline she had been running on, but tonight is quiet, and the chemicals of fight-or-flight are slowly seeping out of her system, and now if only she could quiet her mind and warm herself up, she thinks maybe she could get some sleep.

This base had been abandoned for several decades before yesterday when The General and Poe had pried open the door. The following hours had been a flurry of turning on ancient equipment, headcounts, inventory, monitoring for signals from allies, and keeping watch for the First Order. Finding the climate controls for the base had not been high on the priority list. And, she mused, perhaps it was completely comfortable for those who had not spent their lives day in and day out in desert heat.

No one was entirely sure where the First Order was, but as no ships had appeared overhead in the hours since finding the base, the air had started to settle. Leia had kept a few people by her side to be awake through the night, but she had sent everyone else to find themselves a space in the sparse quarters in the small base for a few hours of rest. 

There were so few of them left that everyone had managed to be in a room by themselves. Rey could tell that for a few of the pilots and lower ranks, this was a novelty that they hadn't come across in a long time. She wouldn't have minded sharing a room, if another body in the same proximity would have raised the temperature a few degrees. But when she closed her eyes and images of him standing before her suddenly on Ahch-Too flashed across her mind, she was grateful that she was alone. How could one explain speaking to the air? After what had happened just a day or so earlier, she shouldn't be eager to see him again, and yet he crawled across her mind whenever she wasn't occupying herself with anything else. He had not come with her. He had made his choice. 

But still, they had been right in the middle of battle. If she could talk to him again, like the night on the island. She knows he will not turn to the light immediately. But when she reaches out with the Force, she still feels a small light in the dark. She feels a small glow that is Ben, and not Kylo. She does not think she is making it up. She hopes.

Her room is so cold.

After an hour of staring into the darkness, her mind replaying over and over the feeling of Ben up against her back, the Force flowing through both of them in a way that she wasn't entirely sure was the normal for those who fought together. The connection seemed to meld them almost as two beings joined as one in the motion of the fight...how it seemed like what they were doing was bigger than them, bigger than anything that had come before it...

She gets up. Perhaps she will have better luck on the Falcon. Chewbacca is probably using one of the bunks, but she knows there is another.

At least there she knows where the heating switches are.

She shivers. That decides it.

She pulls the thin blanket from the bunk and wraps it around her shoulders. The door squeaks as she opens it to the hallway, and she winces. She wants to be as quiet as possible. Not that the General would frown upon her for wandering around in the middle of the night, but she isn't entirely sure that it would be smiled upon. And she doesn't want to have to explain that she is cold, and maybe a little frightened and uncomfortable. She's aware, peripherally, that there are those who are looking to her for the strength and calm that Jedi present.

She will be fine in the Falcon.

As she rounds a corner, she hears footsteps coming towards her and the whispers of two hushed voices. She quickly and quietly ducks into an alcove.

“...doesn't mean they won't find us soon.”

“But you can take a rest as we lay low for a while. At least take a nap. We've been through a lot. You're still recovering. Let us handle it for an hour or...”

The voices of General Leia and Poe fade down the corridor. Poe is not wrong, Rey thinks. They all need sleep, and maybe Leia most of all. And soon, Rey would have to decide how much to tell her about Ben.

Tomorrow. She could decide that tomorrow. When she is more rested.

The Falcon hadn't moved from where they had landed, just inside the bay doors. All of the lights are off. Chewbacca must be sleeping. She feels goosebumps prick up and down her arms as air ten degrees warmer than inside the base washes over her. Heat, she thinks, relief unknotting her stomach. A hallway and a few steps later and she gratefully collapses into the bunk she had claimed a few days ago. She pulls the heavier but rougher blanket over her thin resistance one, and buries her face in the pillow. It smells familiar, and calming. She is warm now, not as warm as Jakku, but at least as warm as-

the fire hot and flickering. Her hair wet, her skin prickling with goosebumps just like this. Her hand stretched out hesitantly, fingers meeting fingers, brushing against the tips, ice that didn't melt in the glow of the heat. Brown eyes staring so deeply into hers and the color temperature of a face going from a chill grey to the golden amber around her-

Her eyes open.

She is on the Falcon, and she can see her breath.

Where was the climate control switch again? Had Chewbacca switched it off? She swings her legs onto the floor and ice leeches up through her feet. How had it become this cold so quickly? The hair on her neck raises. Something is wrong. Her stomach ties itself into a powerful knot again.

She is compelled to move forward, back out into the hallway, into the mist-

The mist. The rain. A dark opening in a cave of rock. Where is the climate control switch? It's around here somewhere, on the cave wall, she tells herself. 

And there, right where it should be-there stands a stormtrooper in gleaming white armor. It reaches for a blaster as her hand instinctively goes to her belt for the lightsaber, but there is nothing there. Because it is broken, and she is defenseless. She ducks into an alcove as the trooper advances. Breathing heavily, she shuts her eyes and counts to ten. He must have passed by now. She slowly peeks back out to the cave hallway of the Falcon.

And then the trooper sees her movement and he begins to run. She turns around and flees, twisting and turning her way through the labyrinth of passages that she doesn't quite remember. The ship is huge. How are there so many passages? She can hear the footsteps behind her, and she knows if she stops the trooper will find her. It becomes harder and harder to run-like she is running chest deep through thick mud. She's trying her best, just to move, but her legs are heavy and her body wont obey. The footsteps get closer; just behind her as she breaks through the muddy, slow run only to stumble right into the an opening with the panel that contains the switches.

There is a body slumped on the floor under the panel.

She no longer hears the trooper's footsteps gaining behind her, but considering this new development she isn't sure that's a good thing. The body is wearing black clothes that looks like they have been slashed in several places. The cloth is in heaps, all over the floor and across the lap. There is blood. Everywhere. 

The dark eyes that once stared into hers so intensely are staring at her again, glassy and unseeing. The hand that touched hers is limp on the floor by his side in the pool of blood.

In a glow of green, Luke Skywalker steps out of the darkness, his eyes manic, insane. His smile is curled into an evil sneer, like she has never seen before. 

“The Jedi must die,” he says, and before she can reach out for the red lightsaber that must be in this room, he lightning quick raises his green blade and swings at her as she screams-

“REY!” she hears, and she tries to move, but finds herself locked in place, her arms pinioned to her sides, her chest with a tight band across it. A band? No. Arms. Arms locked around her arms and chest, holding her tightly together, back in her bed on the Falcon.

For a moment, she believes it is the arms of evil Luke, and her stomach turns and almost empties right then and there. But Luke is dead, she thinks, and this is the Falcon, with it's normal walls, made of padded insulation and metal, not rock. She is struggling to break free of the arms, but they are strong and tight around her. She is spent. She can't move, and her throat breaks free with a cry.

“Rey,” she hears again, calmer, softer, and more pointed. Controlled. This time, she recognizes the voice, but she is still choking on sobs. Now he is going to kill her. Will it ever end?

“Stop fighting,” his voice says again, firmly and quietly, “Stop fighting me. It was a dream. A bad dream.”

The arms around her are pale and muscular and massive. He's behind her, and since she cannot see his face, she hardly believes it is truly him. But who else could it be? She can't form words, but she is crying and shivering, her mind repeatedly showing her Luke's twisted and evil dream face. But she can feel his body lining her back like a wall. His mouth is at the base of her neck and his nose is in her hair. He feels real.

She breathes. But if all of that before wasn't real, is this?

“Are you really here?” she asks, her voice cracking.

His deep voice resonates into her back. 

“As real as it...can be,” he answers carefully.

And she understands. He is somewhere on a bed in a some First Order ship, light years away. But he is still alive, the vision of him slashed to pieces and bleeding out is just one of her mind. She would know if he were really dead. She would feel that. She is sure.

He is breathing in and out calmly. She realizes in a few moments that she is trying to match her breathing to his. It reminds her of the mediation techniques. It calms her mind.

“When did you get here?” she asks, after a few minutes of silence that has slowed her heart.

“I woke up here. You were thrashing around and shaking. Must have been some dream.”

She is still afraid to turn around and look at him. This is so peaceful, almost lovely, and what if she turns around and that twists it to something terrible? She had seen him dead just a moment ago. What if she turns around and it turns out that she is looking at Snoke?

She realizes that she's brought her arms up to hold onto his across her chest. She can feel his hair on her neck.

“Ben,” she says quietly.

He doesn't respond, but he holds her tighter, almost imperceptibly.

“Shouldn't we be fighting?” she continues, just as quietly.

“Maybe. Do you want to fight?” he asks. She opens her mouth to respond, but he continues, “You don't look like you want to fight. It's the night. We're galaxies away. We can forget there's a fight.”

It doesn't make sense, she wants to tell him. It's so easy for an oppressor to forget that it's a fight when they have all the power.

But it's so calm here, in his arms. And comforting. 

And she is warm. So warm. Warm like on Jakku. Warm like she is when she visits that place in the back of her mind that she barely remembers.

She doesn't want to fight. She wishes he was here for real, beside her in living warmth.

Someday, she allows herself to think again, for the first time since the battle.

She moves to shift and turn towards him. He loosens his grip and lets her turn. And there are his deep eyes, boring right into her.

His large hands take up almost her whole back. Their knees knock together and lock into a pile. Her hands land on his bare chest. He feels so solid.

“The Force?” she asks for confirmation, though she knows it has to be.

“Still the Force,” he answers with a nod, and then-does she imagine it? Or does his expression lighten just barely as he continues, “The Force, and not Snoke.”

“But you feel so real,” she replies.

“And you.”

His voice is nothing more than a whisper, and the intensity of it sends a shiver down her back that has nothing to do with being cold. His fingers begin to trail through the hair at the back of her neck. Her hands work on their own, grazing the skin up to his cheeks, tracing his scar and moving back to thread into his thick, dark curls at the back of his head.

There is no way to tell who moves first. They both pull forward-or the Force pulls them like a magnet-and there are lips against her own, warm and real-real-so real.

Her stomach lurches and her grip tightens. It feels like fighting the guards again, but lesser, in a way that draws her in and tantalizes her, telling her to find the way right here and now to use their bodies to unite them just like they were in that moment. 

It feels dangerous, and dark, and lovely.

They pull away from each other.

His eyes are open and soft and pleading, full of an emotion that she doesn't want to recognize. Like they were when reached his hand out to her. Like when she saw him and shut the door.

“Will you still be here when I wake up?” she asks, thinking of how unfair it is to ask him.

“I don't know,” he answers.

“Will you come back?” she asks, thinking of how both of them have had a myriad of people who didn't, and how this just opens up a door that could lead to disappointment.

He recognizes this as well, his eyes intensely gazing into hers. She knows neither of them understands how this works. She knows he doesn't have any more answers than she does. 

But she also sees and hears the conviction in his tone when he answers, “Of course.”

Her eyes are close to closing. Her heartbeat has returned to normal. Ben is here, with his mouth against her forehead and his arms around her.

Tomorrow, there can be a First Order and a Resistance again. When she wakes up, she will walk back out into the chilly base and pretend that nothing has happened.

But tonight, there is no fight. Tonight, in Ben Solo's arms, she is the warmest that she has ever been.

And that is everything.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is the first thing I've ever published, ever! I hope you enjoyed, please be kind...less than two years til Episode 9!


End file.
